For three mornings this week, I sat at my desk waiting for Dutch to give me the low down on the preschool drop-off. On Wednesday, nearly an hour after drop off, he called me:

"Yeah, it was pretty much the same as yesterday. I stayed around a bit longer. In between howls she told me she was tired so she sat down with her pillow and one of her classmates brought over a blanket and we all sat there with the teacher and kind of petted her and told her everything was okay while she whimpered."

"What happened next?"

"She ripped one. It was one of those awful smellers."

"Did anyone say anything?"

"No, two little girls kind of backed away holding their noses, but I think even they understood she was still too fragile to point it out. Her teacher stayed right there, though. She toughed it out."

"That's how you know you've lucked out as far as teachers go, I guess."

"Totally."

* * * * *

The good news is that every day at pick up time, Juniper was smiling and having fun with her new friends, though she did run to him and grab his leg at the end of the day, screaming, "Dada!" Not too traumatized yet. I'll save the real trauma for when she's a teenager and I can pull out that fart story.